Fight for Your Alienation

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the author(s) 2013ISSN 1473-2866 (Online)

ISSN 2052-1499 (Print)www.ephemerajournal.org

volume 13(4): 785-807

article | 785

Fight for your alienation: The fantasy ofemployability and the ironic struggle for self-exploitation

Peter Bloom

abstract

This paper draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis, to introduce employability as a culturalfantasy that organizes identity around the desire to shape, exploit and ultimately profitfrom an employable self. Specifically, the paper shows how individuals seek to overcome

their subjective and material alienation by maximizing their self-exploitation throughconstantly enhancing their employability. This linking of empowerment to self-exploitation has expanded into a broader organizational and political demand calling onindividuals to fight for their alienation by having managers and governments help thembetter exploit themselves through enhancing their employability. Paradoxically, the morecontemporary subjects aim to overcome their subjective and material alienation throughfantasies of employability the more alienated they become.

Introduction

Perhaps no greater freedom exists than the ability to determine ones personaldestiny. Employability stands at the heart of this trumpeted empowerment;purportedly providing individuals the resources to not only obtain employmentbut also, more importantly, the opportunity to control their employment fate(Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Hall, 2002). Consequently, employability points tothe emergence of an empowering contemporary identity juxtaposed against achanging economic reality that is marked by even greater job insecurity (Kanter,

1991; Harriot and Pemberton, 1996; Ghoshal et al., 1999).


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Yet, critical scholars point to the more insidious character of employabilitydiscourses (see especially Cremin, 2010). These studies highlight the growingconcern that employability, far from empowering workers, actually deepens theircommitment to capitalist ideologies and managerial demands. At the heart of

this desire for employability, organizations wish to cultivate a culture in whichthe authority of management is re-established through the creation of acommitted, yet autonomous, workforce (Costea et al., 2007). Employability isfurther meant to indicate how people should behave and what theirresponsibilities are (Field, 1997: 62) and is considered to be representative of anew form of capitalist self-disciplining (Dean 1994, 1998; Cruikshank 1999). Allthis suggests an identity built around domination rather than self-determination,whereby one comes to identify with, and seeks to embody, the perceived desiresof the boss (Cremin, 2010).

Such critiques invite an investigation into the deeper ways employability shapescontemporary subjectivity. This paper aims to better understand how desires forself-mastery, as presently associated with employability, are thought to influencework identities and contribute to emerging forms of managerial control. In doingso, the analysis aims to go beyond a simplified binary of in control/controlled;rather, it emphasizes how employability operates by granting individuals theprospect of mastery over their employment self. An idealized, but never realized,figure of the fully employable work subject presents itself; able to dictate ones

career choices such that he or she, instead of the boss, is most profitably able toexploit ones labour.

In order to make this argument, this article turns to the psychoanalytic insightsof Jacques Lacan. Organizational literature drawing on Lacan links professional

identities to a utopian ego ideal affectively seizing employees in conformity tocompany values (Arnaurd, 2002; Bloom and Cederstrm, 2009; Vanheule et al,2003; de Cock and Bhm, 2007; Styhre, 2008). Here, individuals strive for analways precarious subjective security attached to a beatific, though eternally

elusive, vision of a romanticized self associated with culturally providedfantasies. Significantly, this attachment is made possible and strengthened,paradoxically, by the continual failure to achieve this identity (Driver, 2009;Hoedemaekers, 2010). A key theoretical intervention made in this work is thecentral role fantasy plays in not only establishing selfhood, but also organizinghow individuals cope with the eternal failure to realize this ego ideal as well astheir own fragmentary subjective nature through the continual attempt to workon or master this socially provided self.

Building on such insights, this paper contends that employability is a culturalfantasy that structures identity around desires for self-mastery. Essential to this


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Peter Bloom Fight for your alienation

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identity is individuals longings to subjectively take control and materially profitfrom their own life. Consequently, current and potential employees paradoxicallystrive to overcome their subjective alienation through mastering their acceptedmaterial alienation as a capitalist subject: the contemporary subject of

employability struggles not for the eradication of exploitation, but rather for theirright to self-exploitation. Notably, this struggle for self-exploitation representsthe ironic ways individuals seek to psychologically deal with the eternal failure tocontrol their professional and personal destiny through continually attempting tomaster their self via employability. Further, this struggle is transferred ontogrowing demands for employers and governments to empower individuals byenhancing their employability.

The paper is structured as follows. First, it critically reflects upon the paradoxical

ethos of self-mastery that drives contemporary values of employability. Thisinitial analysis will then be linked to a Lacanian-inspired theoretical frameworkconnecting identity and ideological domination to the efforts of individuals toattain self-mastery through an alienating fantasmatic identity. The followingsections explore, in turn, employability as a cultural fantasy that organizesidentity around the desire to shape, exploit and ultimately profit from anemployable self. In its most idealized form, this identity represents anempowered mode of self-alienation, in which individuals attempt to assumepower over their identity and life through embracing and working to control an

alienated capitalist identity. The final section concludes with an examination ofhow ideologies of capitalism and managerialism are presently reinforced throughthis fight for ones alienation.

Employability and alienation: Whos in control?

Worker empowerment is increasingly associated with values of employability(Guest, 1998; Ellig, 1998; Kanter, 1989; Littleton and Arthur, 2000; Yerkes,

2011). More precisely, it revolves around enhancing ones capacity to more readilyand easily obtain and maintain new employment (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996;Hall, 2002). Employability is inexorably bound to ideas of enhancing workersoverall autonomy (Schmidt, 2006). To that effect, employability promises tomake each worker a more aware and a more independent organizer of thesuccession of activities and commitments that, combined, constitute his/herworking life (Gazier, 2001: 23). Yet, the promise of employability as a source ofempowerment has been progressively challenged. Critical scholars point toemployability as a force for ensuring that individuals conform to the needs of the

contemporary marketplace and the evolving prerogatives of management(Anderson, 2007; Schmidt, 1990: 101, 352).


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As a result, identity construction based on desires for enhancing onesemployability becomes translated into a continuous process of maintainingprofitability and fulfilling the desires of employers. This reveals a deeper paradoxthat plagues discourses of employability within contemporary capitalism.

Namely, values of employability appeal to individuals as a means for controllingtheir own capitalist destiny and identity; it manifests itself in practice as a form ofcapitalist self-disciplining. Here, the call to become more employable is ademand for individuals to pre-occupy the self with the self (Dean, 1994, 1998;Rose, 1998; Rimke, 2000), in order to ensure survival and thrive within abusiness climate characterized by regular job turnover and technological change.Employability, further, is part of a move toward the development of self-regulatory mechanisms for empowering individuals to better conform tomanagerial wants (Anderson, 2007: 127-128). Employability, accordingly, will

indicate how people should behave and what their responsibilities are (Field,1997: 62).

This paradox speaks to a broader shift in strategies of managerial control basedon the ironic championing of the self-determining and autonomous subject.Willmott (1993) argues, hence, that contemporary forms of corporate regulationare founded on a cultural promotion of workers freedom and autonomy:

Corporate Culturists commend and legitimise the development of a technology of

cultural control that is intended to yoke the power of self determination to therealization of corporate values from which employees are encouraged to derive asense of autonomy and identity. (Willmott, 1993: 563)

Expanding on such insights, some scholars have revealed the ways regulativeemployment ideologies and practices are sustained through an affectiveattachment to an economic identity that promises self-determination. Identitiesassociated with market rationality (Bloom and Cederstrm, 2009),entrepreneurship (Jones and Spicer, 2005) and autonomy (Maravelias, 2007)present a false illusion of self-determination in which the employee, rather than

the employer, is in charge.

This linking of control to themes of autonomy and self-determination points tothe lack of control individuals feel over their identity in relation to theseorganizational and economic discourses. Put differently, is ones identitydetermined by ones own values and aspirations or simply a reflection of thecultural ideals of the marketplace and managers? Costas and Fleming (2009)describe this tension as representative of a deeper discursive self-alienation;whereby, employees realize that their core selves are constructed by

organizations rather than their own self-determination. As such, the completesubjectification of the inner self is made difficult as people recognize that they


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have become strangers to themselves (Leidner, 1993; Sennett, 1998). For thisreason, individuals struggle to protect their selves from organizational control(Mumby, 2005; Trethewey, 1997).

This form of subjective self-alienation has direct resonance with present daydiscourses of employability. Cremin (2010: 131), in this regard, describes howthe subordination to capital (the material fact of labour) is defused by the sensewe have of our independence from the employer (an identification that is notassociated with the act of labour). Drawing on the psychoanalytic perspective ofJacques Lacan, he illuminates the desire for employability as a perpetually futilequest for freedom, revolving around the need to meet the always elusive bosssdesire. In becoming fully employable, one can achieve her or his professionaland personal ambitions since, armed with comprehensive skills, one may choose

from an infinite number of opportunities. Yet, as Cremin notes, this drive formastery leaves one permanently unfulfilled and beholden to capitalist demands,finding that regardless of their effort one can never be employable enough.

However, this analysis, while valuable, does not fully capture the way thissubjective alienation associated with discourses of employability plays into andreinforces an individuals material alienation as a capitalist subject. Values ofemployability are not merely a means to an end but increasingly shape howindividuals view empowerment and more fundamentally their identity. At stake

in this paper, then, is clarifying the ironic and deeper nature of this identificationas an explicit identification of capitalist empowerment that is central tocontemporary capitalist exploitation and directly connects up to Marxian ideas ofmaterial alienation. More precisely, the paper investigates how present dayprocesses of material commodification are transformed into an attractive desirefor self-exploitation through a fantasy of employability.

The next section introduces the Lacanian concept of fantasy: employability isrevealed as an idealized identification, one that is premised on the illusory ability

to overcome perceived subjective alienation through controlling ones ownmaterial alienation.

Fantasizing the self between self-mastery and alienation

As pointed out in the above section, a central component of employabilitydiscourses is the question of who controls ones identity. This tension can betheoretically transferred into broader discussions of the relation between

subjective alienation and desires for self-mastery in identity construction. Ratherthan think of these as opposing concepts, however, Lacan proposes a theory of


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the identity which recognizes their paradoxical but nonetheless mutuallyreproducing interaction. More precisely, the affective appeal of an alienatingcultural identity is found in its always incomplete promise of achieving self-mastery through a dominant social discourse.

Lacan, in line with psychoanalysis generally, rejects ideas of the autonomous ego.Drawing upon the original insights of Freud, he views identity instead as alwaysformed around a subjectification to and overdertermination by onesunconscious. Lacan takes this objection to autonomy even further, positing thatselfhood is necessarily structured according to socially constructed desires andnorms external to ones own subjectivity. This subjugation is multi-leveled existing in the interrelated registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real.At the level of the imaginary, individuals are captured by the image of an

idealized other, originating developmentally in their first view of their reflectedselves as an infant, which affectively promises psychic wholeness against theiralways felt lacking nature (Lacan, 1977). This imaginary ideal is formed withinthe matrix of an external symbolic discourse unconsciously shaping individualsdesires. For this reason Lacan (1988) argues that it is actually discourse, not thesubject, which has autonomy as it is this outside set of values andunderstandings that organizes subjectivity and consequently consciousidentification.

Thus for Lacan, self-mastery, the possibility of ever being a fully self-determiningsubject is impossible as alienation is an inescapable part of identity. Putdifferently, to be a subject is to be alienated. To this effect, in a tellingly entitledchapter The Subject and Other: Alienation, he (1981) proposes two types ofalienation as precipitated by the presence of a Big Other, a figure who ostensiblyrepresents psychological fullness. The first is contained in the very decision tobecome a subject, through entering into a prevailing symbolic discourse. Thepossibility of psychic fullness, or of overcoming our innate sense of lack, throughthe symbolic command of a Big Other is inalterably alienating; it is akin,

according to Lacan, of facing the slaves choice of their freedom or their life.Secondly this alienation persists even after one enters into the symbolic order.The Real of who one is forever escapes the symbolic meanings culturallyprovided by a Big Other. Accordingly, one is by nature alienated, in that onedefies symbolic signification. The Real of our identity is marked by our non-meaning, literally non-sense. Lacan (1981) portrays this relationship in a Venndiagram [figure 1].


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Figure 1: Being, sense and nonsense.

However, drawing on Lacanian theory there is a more complex story to tellregarding this overriding desire for self-mastery in the face of our inherentsubjective alienation; one in which it is not merely a delusion, but rather aproductive fallacy. Far from being a laughable afterthought, self-mastery exists atthe very centre of selfhood: though it may be impossible, without it, so to may beidentity. Indeed Lacan (1977) mentions that a key element of an individualsinitial experience of unity in the Mirror Stageis a jubilation linked to feelings ofself-mastery. It is this perceived false mastery (Lacan, 2001), which continues todrive identity throughout an individuals psychological development. It offerssubjects the perceived opportunity to overcome their natural psychic tendency(Lacan 2001: 6) toward subjective fragmentation and disintegration byreinforcing the autonomy and primacy of the ego, creating an impression oftranscendental consciousness and intentionality (Hoedemaekers, 2010: 81).

Fantasy is crucial to this formation of identity between the poles of subjectivealienation and false mastery. It does so by providing a stable scenario for thisidentification to play out; transferring the eternally futile and alienating drive forselfhood onto a specific desire, or in Lacanian terms an object a, promisingsubjects psychic wholeness. Central to this fantasmatic scenario, is what Lacan(2001) refers to as mconnaissance, whereby the subject misrecognizes theirselfhood with their perceived autonomous ego. This misrecognition furtherreflects the ways the fundamental fantasy of mastery is transferred onto a fixationwith a culturally constructed ego ideal. This idealized self-image motivatesindividuals, providing a tangible though always out of reach visage for individualsto imagine their autonomy as attached to over-determining symbolic discourse(Hoedemakers, 2009).


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Yet this promise of overcoming alienation is only ever illusionary, a desire ratherthan a reality. Nevertheless, this must be seen again as a productive failure,whereby it is exactly this eternal inability to fully attain this ego ideal thatultimately sustains the subject in this identity. As Stavrakakis (1999: 29)

observes, identity is necessarily a failed identification in that for even the ideaof identity to become possible its ultimate impossibility has to be instituted. It isthis constitutive impossibility that, by making full identity impossible, makesidentification possible, if not necessary. This highlights the paradox central toidentity and alienation: the more one seeks to overcome alienation through asocially provided identity the more alienated one ultimately becomes. To thisend, psychic security is maintained not in the achievement but in the eternallydisappointing pursuit of these elusive identities. Identity, according to iek(2001: 24, see also Cremin, 2010: 138) therefore exists in a kind of curved space

the nearer you get to it, the more it eludes your grasp (or the more you possessit, the greater the lack).

This Lacanian theoretical framework allows then for a reconsideration of thesubject in relation to desires for self-mastery as set against the inherentalienation of identification. The illusions of independence, autonomy and self-mastery reinforce an ultimately socially over-determined identity. It is exactly inassuming that one is free and in control that it is possible to repress therecognition of ones own domination. Current discourses of employability,

whereby the underlying demand on individuals to conform to the bosses desireare interlaced with personal aspirations for professional autonomy and control,reflect this complex and often quite ironic relation of alienation and self-masteryin the construction of identity. Yet it also shows how this subjective paradox ofalienation plays itself out in contemporary in relation to processes of materialalienation. More precisely, as the next sections will aim to illuminate in greaterdetail, the more one strives to be non-alienated through a fantasy ofemployability the more subjectively and materially alienated they become as acapitalist subject.

The paradoxical fantasy of employability

The theoretical importance of desires for self-mastery to reproduce an ultimatelyalienating identity helps illuminate the current appeal of employabilitydiscourses. These discourses reconfigure how individuals relate to theirsubjective and material alienation. Conventionally, starting with Marx, alienationwas connected to the inherent exploitation an individual encounters as a wage

labourer. More precisely, alienation is conceived as the disconnection workersexperience toward their labour, others and themselves in accordance with the


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championed as the ability to obtain new employment when required to manageemployment transitions (Hillage and Pollard, 1999: 83). In this spirit,employability is promoted as independence and work against the old standardsof payments and dependence (Finn, 2000: 393). This illustrates how the

symbolic demand to conform to managerial demands is reinforced through anappealing ego ideal of self-mastery. A romantic figure emerges who directs thecourse of his or her life, free from the whims of economic downturns, bad jobsand an unexciting career.

Significantly, this ironic strive for self-mastery through employability transcendsmere career advancement. It organizes identity, directing desires for self-masteryinto the continuous pursuit of personal fulfillment. In this context Cremin(2010) connects desires associated with employability to a type of liberal personal

fulfillment anchored in a subjectivity of negative dis-identification toward theirwork. According to this logic, people cultivate their employability simply, andoften quite cynically, to advance their own personal goals and ambitions. Suchnegative dis-identification, according to Cremin, is both spatial and temporal innature. Individuals disconnect from their current employment and enhancestronger identification with whom they see themselves as outside of work (e.g. Imay be an accountant to pay the bills, but I am really a musician), or whom theyhope to become (e.g. Today I am just a mail room lackey, but soon I will saveenough money to leave this job and do something better with my life). Here,

employment and employability are merely professional means to a personal end.

Cremin, nevertheless, misses the deeper ways such fantasies of employability areshaping identity in conformity to employer desires and broader capitalistideologies. Employability goes beyond organizational ideas of good work or ameans to achieve personal goals and is considered instead a hypergood (Taylor,1989) that represents a source of self-realization and self-actualization (Costeaet al., 2007: 249). This reflects a certain paradoxical identification wherebysubjective feelings of alienation can be overcome by better taking control over

ones material alienation. A supposedly evolved progressive soft capitalismemerges, which conceives

The self as a self which considers itself to be something more, something muchdeeper, more natural and authentic than the self of what is taken to be involvedwith the superficialities of the merely materialistic-cum-consumeristic; the self asa self which as to work itself to enrich and explore itself in the process of dealingwith its problems. (Heelas, 2002: 80; see also Costea et al., 2007)

This conception of the self illuminates the paradoxical interpellation of identity to

a dominant ideology via themes of self-mastery. The authoritarian demand to


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meet employers desires is transformed into an appealing fantasy of self-determination and actualization.

In this manner, selfhood becomes inexorably connected to the insatiable demand

to improve ones employability, in order to obtain greater personal andprofessional freedom and satisfaction. Revealed is a fundamental paradox ofsubjectivity within present day capitalism linked to discourses of employability.Namely, the more one attempts to overcome their subjective alienation throughimproving their employability, the more alienated subjectively they become. Inthis new age to be employed is at risk (and) to be employable is to be secure(Hawkins, 1999: 8). This sentiment reveals the subjective security provided bythis identification. More to the point though, it reflects how efforts to takecontrol of ones identity, to be this elusive authentic self are necessarily linked

to better meeting the expectations of ones present and future employers.

Demonstrated is the paradox characterizing subjective and material alienation inrelation to affective discourses of employability. To reiterate, the more oneattempts to assert an independent identity through fantasies of employability, thegreater their ultimate subjective and material alienation. The next section, hence,will explore how this desire for self-mastery linked to enhancing onesemployability is channelled into a struggle for maximizing self-exploitation.

Employability and the ironic struggle for self-exploitation

The fantasy of employability directs desires for overcoming subjective alienationinto an empowering identity which paradoxically further conforms tomanagerial desires. This subjective paradox extends as well to materialalienation. Affective discourses of employability link professional empowermentto continued and even more intensive forms of capitalist exploitation. Cremin(2010) introduces the concept of reflexive exploitation connected to

employability, whereby a person reflects on herself as an object of exchange inorder to access a wage and social status, to choose a life that is compatible withthe injunctions of liberal capitalism (Cremin, 2010: 137). Yet this accountunderplays the transformation of objective self-alienation into an empoweringsubjective identity. Discourses of employability, by contrast, portray theconformity to capitalist values and managerial prerogatives as an enticing butelusive opportunity to exert control over your life, even if only fleetingly, throughbecoming eternally more employable.

These insights, on the surface, seem to echo ideas of identity as a project ofcontinual self-creation emerging from and serving to reproduce prevailing social


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ideologies (see for instance Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Ezzamel et al., 2001;Giddens, 1993). Specifically, an ego ideal, as first theorized by Freud, offerssubjects a point outside of the ego from which one observes and evaluates onesown ego as a whole or totality, just as ones parent observes or evaluates it (Fink,

2004: 117), in accordance with existing hegemonic values. However, this cannotbe seen as a straightforward process of simply maintaining a culturally providedself. As Hoedemaekers (2010: 382) astutely notes, for Lacan identifications areinadequate by definition, and conscious discourse of the subject they appear in ispeppered with slips, unintended significations and fumbled acts. The ability ofan affective discourse to provide individuals with the resources to cope with thisfailure is key here. Most notably, this can be achieved by offering subjects a socialself to perfect: one corresponding with this ego ideal. Thus whereasHoedemaekers emphasizes the constant attempts by subjects to overcome this

lack by seeking to make this identity coherent in his or her everyday speech, thisanalysis highlights how individuals cope with this underlying psychicinadequacy through the fleeting feelings of self-mastery attained in the dailyundertaking of this identity work.

In the present era, this always-partial experience of self-mastery is commonlyassociated with the ongoing efforts to maximize ones self-exploitation as anemployable subject. Tellingly, employability is said to revolve around the constantenhancement of ones human and social capital (Dess and Shaw, 2001; Jackson

and Schuler, 1995). By making oneself more employable, better suited to meetthe needs of management, one is supposedly increasing their power of self-determination. Here we again encounter the irony underlying discourses ofemployability, as they relate to contemporary identity construction; namely, theyexist as an ethic promising workers the ability to master themselves byanticipating and acceding to employers ever changing demands. Yet thisapparent contradiction makes sense when economic exploitation is understood,less as an instance of surrendering to the mercurial whims of management, andmore as an empowering opportunity to achieve a temporary feeling of self-

mastery through increasing ones capacity to exploit oneself.

In short processes of capitalist self-disciplining associated with employability,paradoxically, represent an ongoing effort to feel more in control of onesprofessional life. Accordingly, in practice, employability is depicted as an actionorientation (that) facilitates individuals altering the work situation to suit theirown need (Fugate et al., 2004: 17). It is an identity that seeks to subvert the ethosin which one should simply follow managerial imperatives for its own sake.Instead, individuals should make the workplace work for them. Nevertheless,

this somewhat subversive attitude does not reject the need to fulfill theprerogatives and expectations of ones employer. By contrast, it reconfigures such


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expectations into a repetitive process in which one can experience self-mastery byproviding a blueprint for ongoing identity work (Hoedemaekers, 2010: 382).Consequently

Individuals with high employability actively engage the situation, learning, andasserting whatever influence is possible to alter the situation to fit their ownoccupational interests and fulfill desired career identities. At the same time, theyalter their own cognitions and behaviors to optimize the situation and outcomes,such as job satisfaction and employment opportunities. In short, proactive effortsare manifestations of employability. (Fugate 2004: 17)

To this effect, individuals are urged to constantly rectify or improve onesquotidian existence through intervening upon an inner world throughemployability (Rose, 1998: 192). Concretely, the call to master youremployment fate, as linked to employability, involves constantly working onyourself to become more attractive to potential employers. This employablesubject is akin to Thrifts (2002) fast subject, who is eternally trying to collectmaterial to construct its identity as a success. In this sense, the present worker,inspired by values of employability, struggles valiantly for the right to self-exploitation as a substitute for confronting the emptiness at the core of theirreal identity. This subjectivity is seen in the idealization of individuals asentrepreneurs innovatively advertising and re-advertising themselves in orderto take control of their employment destiny (Kanter, 1993). Employability, in

this sense, involves a reflexive ordering of all experiences for ones own profit(Cremin, 2007; McQuaid and Lindsay, 2005).

Yet this ironic struggle for self-exploitation is always futile, in that just as one cannever be employable enough neither can they ever exploit themselves enough.Individuals must constantly find new ways to benefit their present or futureemployer, ostensibly for their own perceived advantage. Given then itsprioritizing of personal control, this contradiction between an alienatingdiscourse and its reliance on a fantasy of self-mastery is readily apparent in

identities associated with employability. This paradoxical empowerment hasexpanded into a broader discourse of organizational and political freedom, inwhich the contemporary subject is progressively fighting for his or right to beenhance their employability and therefore ironically their subjective and materialalienation.

Fight for your alienation!

Through fantasies of employability the present day capitalist subject seeks to be

empowered by striving to control his or her employment fate. In doing so, theyparadoxically enhance their subjective and material alienation. This ironically


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empowering discourse, nonetheless, represent an evolving framework forarticulating employee demands both inside and outside the workplace. Here,individuals exert their self-mastery through demanding that their managers andthe government, respectively, aid them in their right to maximize their self-

exploitation. The struggle then for self-exploitation in this way becomestransferred into the broader fight for your alienation.

Crucially, this empowering vision of self-exploitation creates a moral demand forindividuals to continually embrace and even deepen their material alienation as apresent or future capitalist employee. Notably, employability stands as a superegoization of the control imperative linked to desires of self-mastery. Thisemphasizes the need for individuals to be responsible for their professionalfortunes, making them accountable for their own personal fate through

constantly becoming more employable. A new ethic appears whereby peopleneed to be proactive when faced with ill-defined circumstances (Sennett, 2006:51; see also Cremin, 2010: 133). Employability, then, at its highest, is championedas not only the ability but the obligation to manage employment transitions andobtain new employment when required (Hillage and Pollard, 1999: 83). Hurlowand Parselle writes thus of the

the burdensome nature of the employability discourse, as students strugglewith aspirations, expectations and comparisons. Most importantly, employabilityappears to be bound up with transition from student to adult, and the associatedtension between the potential for freedom and acceptance of personalresponsibility. (2012: 3)

However, this moral obligation linking freedom to responsibility is againimpossible to fully realize. Nevertheless, its appeal stems from its existence as analways unfulfilled demand that, like ones own self, can continually be workedon and perfected. This insight points to the broader ways a subversiveidentification, existing in the imaginary order, can in fact paradoxically support ahegemonic discourse from the symbolic realm. In the words of Stavrakakis

(2010: 68), Fantasmatically structured enjoyment thus alerts us to the politicallysalient idea that oftentimes it may be more productive to consider the possibilitythat concrete ideals may be sustained rather than subverted by theirtransgression. In this case, it is not so much that an identity is transgressive inthat it challenges an officially sanctioned expectation of the self. Instead, it is thatindividuals are able to achieve a fleeting sense of self-mastery throughconsistently fighting for these identities. Specifically, the impossibility of everachieving psychic harmony and full autonomy in relation to an existing fantasy istransferred onto the empowering struggle against a malevolent figure preventing

this aspiration from being realized (Bloom and Cederstrm, 2009).


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Consequently, this continuing failure is directed outward, unto established powerholders such as managers as part of a broader struggle to become moreemployable. Here, traditional authority figures are alongside individualsthemselves seen as responsible for helping individuals help themselves through

enabling them to better become responsible for their employment fate and, assuch, their identity. Employers, then, are expected to enhance their employeesemployability as an essential part of the contemporary psychological workplacecontract (Jacobsson, 2004). Here, management is reconfigured as a force forhelping individuals fulfill their personal and professional desires:

Management itself thus acquires a new discursive outline: instead of appearing asan authoritarian instance which forces upon workers a series of limitations, it nowpresents itself as a therapeutic formula mediating self-expression by empoweringindividuals to work upon themselves to realize their fully realized identity (Costea

et al., 2007: 247).

Those who fail to do so are judged, either explicitly or by implication, asoutdated; a malicious force preventing individuals from reaching their fullpotential both inside and outside the workplace.

Illuminated, in turn, is how the continual attempt to become empoweredthrough self-exploitation is directed into a wider fight to become moreemployable. The employee is now thought to have control not over production

or general socio-economic conditions, but the success of their self within thissystem. According to Waterman et al. (1994: 88), companies at the cutting edgegive employees the power to assess, hone, redirect, and expand their skills sothat they can stay competitive in the job market. Therefore, the manager isthought to serve their workforce through helping their employees gainexperience in new contexts, increase awareness of their marketable skills andtalents, boost self-presentation efficacy (Ghoshal et al., 1999) and expand theirnetwork of contacts. In this sense, increasing ones skill sets, previouslyunderstood to serve the needs of organizations and managers, is now packaged

as an instance of better allowing dominated workers to take control of theirprofessional and personal prospects. The injunction to be employable,therefore, is translated into a progressive command to successfully exploitoneself, a longing which must be continually fought for in the face of oftenresistant managers and organizations.

Thus, while employability may be conceived as a present day type ofgovernmentality creating citizens who are flexible, adaptable and constantlearners (Fejes, 2010: 93), it is publicly articulated as a new demand placed upon

firms and at a larger level the state by its citizens. In this new world,


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the individual needs to take responsibility for using the opportunities forlifelong learning, by means of education and in-service training, offered by thestate and the market, thus transforming her/himself into an employable personNow, structures for supporting the individual in her/his own choice are createdinstead of collectively planning the future by means of legislative measures and

regulations. (Fejes, 2010: 95)

Past demands for full employment are hence replaced by present calls foremployability (Finn, 2000).

This shift reflects the broader association of employability discourses with ideasof freedom and liberation. Employability is presented as an attractive right thatcan universally appeal to employees as current and future workers, acrossemployment contexts. Not surprisingly, calls for employability, historically, aretied to an emancipatory discourse, where the ultimate purpose of learning wasself-fulfilment (Garsten and Jacobsson, 2004: 6). Yet whereas the currentconventional view is that economic imperative, rather than the emancipatoryproject, is the dominating logic, what this elides is the ways in whichemployability is still subjectively regarded as an emancipatory discourse. Morebroadly, employability is seen as a means for including previously marginalizedgroups empowering traditionally disadvantaged individuals to take advantageand profit from a marketplace where they exert control of their own destiny(Levitas, 1998).

This reading highlights how fantasies of employability direct desires forempowerment into a paradoxical struggle to be more employable and as suchmore attractive to employer desires. This politics revolves around the ability ofindividuals to feel a fleeting sense of self-mastery not only in their constantattempts to increase their self-exploitation but also in their ongoing andimpassioned efforts to demand their right to this greater subjective and materialalienation. Hence, the paradox of employability and capitalism can be againrephrased the more we fight for our empowerment and liberation as

employable subjects the more we fight for our continual and deepeningalienation as capitalist subjects.

Concluding discussion

Contemporary discourses of employability hold out the alluring promise of a selfthat is at once empowered and alienated. It is one that simultaneously accedes tothe demands of employers, while never supposedly ceding to them control overones self or destiny. An attractive identity presents itself that catalyzes ever new

forms of interpellation and disciplining. The dream of becoming master of ouremployment selves is impossible to realize. Instead, this super ego injunction to


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take control leads subjects to invest ever more in being employable, in order toovercome such insecurities associated with not yet having achieved self-mastery.Nonetheless, this ironic drive for control through employability stabilizesidentity, though only precariously, in the process reinforcing capitalist values of

profit and the overriding the power of employers to shape selfhood according totheir needs and desires.

This paper has sought to expand on current critical understandings ofcontemporary work concerning identity as connected to discourses ofemployability. Such values are maintained, in no small part, through promises,though always unfulfilled, of self-mastery. The article has tried to uncover thepsychology driving this objective repression at the core of capitalist labour; theenjoyment subjects garner from their attachment to an alienating identity. This

is an insight similar to iek (1997: 48) when he declares that whatpsychoanalysis can do to help the critique of ideology is precisely to clarify thestatus of this paradoxical jouissance as the payment that the exploited, theservant, receives for serving the Master. Particular to employability andcapitalism, Cremin (2010) maintains that the surplus labour extracted from thepresent day worker is inexorably bound up with the surplus enjoyment theyobtain as an employable subject. Expanding on and challenging this reading,this paper has argued that contemporary domination of workers is legitimatedand reproduced through the attractive desire to become the master of ones

exploitation.

As such, employability stands as a hegemonic discourse structuring identityaround a paradoxical desire for self-mastery, within an admittedly alienatingcapitalist reality. This insight does much to illuminate the subjective character ofthe structural alienation inherent to capitalism. As previously mentioned,identification is caught in the paradox that the nearer you get to it, the more iteludes your grasp (or the more you possess it), the greater the lack (iek, 2001:24, see also Cremin, 2010: 138). However, as I have suggested in this paper, it is

perhaps more accurate to say that the greater the feeling of alienation from onesidentity, the more one seeks to master it. Discourses of employability, hence,exist as a fantasy that not only proposes the promise of non-alienation but alsoprovides individuals with the exact resources to cope with this constantly feltfailure to realize this ego ideal in productive, though ultimately interpellative,ways.

Importantly, this discussion of exploitation, as connected to an alienatingcapitalist identity of employability, is not intended as a judgment on the levels of

alienation between individuals. It is not a matter, at least for the purposes of thisanalysis, to posit that this person is more or less alienated than this person.


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Rather it is to illuminate an increasingly prevalent subjectivity associated with thedesire of individuals to take control of their exploitation. In this sense, the driveto overcome our alienation is manifested in a fetishized desire not to endcapitalist exploitation, as such, but instead to become its master. Underlying

this culture of employability, therefore, is a certain type of grafters mentality inwhich one constantly seeks to get one over the boss for ones advantage.Represented is the deeper colonization of subjectivity in line with capitalistvalues through these discourses. Identity centres here on the capitalist desire tomaximize ones profit from exploitation. In this case, one is always seeking tomaximize the profit from ones personal self-exploitation.

These insights point, in turn, to the ways an empowering identity can beironically constructed so as to actually reflect dominant demands and

understandings. Lacanian scholars, within the field of organization studies andbeyond, note that identities associated with empowerment, transgression and theobscene are incorporated into a broader symbolic order through fantasy. Yet,what this analysis also reveals is how a conforming identity is actually framed soas to appear empowering. It is not so much that an empowering orientation is co-opted; rather, that acquiescing to hegemonic values is made more palatable whenclothed in an appealing sheen of empowerment and resistance. In terms ofemployability, the growing command for subjects to accept the wishes ofmanagement, whatever they may be, is framed as an empowering identity of self-

mastery that one must constantly protect and struggle toward.

At a broader level, this analysis desires to expand upon contemporary views ofideological interpellation and control. Its central theoretical claim is thatsublimination is connected to the cultural construction of a fantasmatic self thatcan continually be worked on and perfected. This builds on existing work inthe field linking interpellation and control to failure of identification(Hoedemaekers, 2010; Roberts, 2005). Specifically, the failure to ever meet anego ideal creates the ground by which conscience can be turned aggressively

back upon the self (Roberts, 2005: 636). However, whereas theorists such asRoberts associate this with a type of moral accounting, I have suggested that it isan ironically empowering identification. Specifically, this paper has explored theways the sublimination and disciplining of identity in conformity to a prevailingideology revolves around allowing subjects to continually play out desires for self-mastery, through the continual attempt to perfect a socially provided self.

While this analysis may seem overly bleak, it also seeks to provide thefoundations for moving beyond this fantasy of employability. Recently, a number

of critical scholars within the field have theorized the relation of fantasy toresistance. Hoedemaekers (2010), for example, calls on subjects to pay attention


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to such interruptions to identification as potential sites for transversing, or indifferent words break free from, a prevailing fantasy. Similarly, Contu (2008),inspired by iek, promotes a form of resistance by which individuals are willingto engage in acts that defy the symbolism and enjoyment associated with their

current identities. Specific to discourses of employability, Cremin (2010)discusses using the desire for non-alienation to break free from managerialdemands. Yet as this analysis has attempted to show, it is exactly these desiresthat can paradoxically deepen individuals subjective and material alienation aspresent day capitalist subjects. Rather, it is crucial to construct new fantasies andtherefore selves to master which reject ideologies of managerialism andexploitation in favour of new values. Indeed, this appears to be happening theworld over, as struggles in the wake of the financial crisis, such as the occupymovement or those catalyzed by the European debt crisis, in which new

commons are emerging reconfiguring identity work in relation to ideals ofgreater social and economic freedom and democracy.

To conclude, employability represents a romanticized vision of work, in whichone can be the master of ones own alienation. It is a compelling ethos wherebyworkers can seek to take control of their identity and destiny in an otherwisedisempowering labour market. In doing so, they become one and the same, inspirit, as the capitalist they strive simultaneously to please and struggle against.Individuals are directed to desire nothing more than to materially exploit the

labour of their self for their own personal profit. Yet, ultimately, this attractivedesire for self-mastery structures identity around the supposedly empoweringstruggle for self-exploitation. Hence, not only is the modern worker destined tobe alienated, but also is increasingly compelled to fight for this alienation.

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the author

Dr. Peter Bloom is a lecturer in the school of management at Swansea University. Hisprimary research interests include ideology, subjectivity and power, specifically as theyrelate to broader discourses and everyday practices of capitalism and democracy. Hiswork has been or will soon be published in Journal of Political Ideologies, Theory & Event,

Research on the Sociology of Organization,Journal of Organizational Change Management,Organization and International Journal of iek Studies.E-mail: [email protected]

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Fight for Your Alienation